“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” John Muir

Humans are now changing our climate so rapidly that all of civilization is in the balance. Our Earth desperately needs you, the youth of our nation, to show leadership if our planet is to have a sustainable future. There is no time to wait for someone else to act. Please read the below suggestions; these are just a start.

Reading: It is so important that you think for yourself. Read Henry David Thoreau’s great book, “Walden” and begin to understand the meaning of living simply. Read Darwin’s “The Voyage of the Beagle” or Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers: how man is changing the climate”. Buy a student subscription to Scientific American to help you be an independent thinker and enable you to have scientific facts so you can have the means to put viable actions in place for your generation and beyond. Meet Thomas Homer-Dixon, one of Canada’s greatest thinkers on humanity’s climate crisis on the afternoon of May 30. He is eager to meet with youth before his evening talk on climate change. Read an essay from his new book, “Climate Shift: how the twin crises of oil depletion and climate change will define the future”. Interested? Write to celebrateearth@yahoo.ca to find out what you need to read and how to join the group.

Get to know Nature up close by finding a place to grow an organic garden. No space? Replace your “green” lawn that only wastes water. Go on a wilderness hike or canoe trip for no less than one week (a week is necessary to acclimatize yourself) in northern Ontario. Take a bus to get there if you can. Appreciate nature by working with a bee-keeper or organic farmer this summer. Our honey-bees need help and agriculture needs honey-bees.

Use your bicycle or public transportation to get to school. Refuse taking a car ride there. If you’re going to visit friends and it is too far to walk, ask your parents to drive you part way and say you’ll bicycle the rest of the distance provided the weather and the road is safe. Increase the kilometers you cycle as you become stronger. In a car, don’t use a drive-through. You are now becoming a conserver and not a consumer.

“One of the greatest gifts you can give to the planet is to choose to become vegetarian, or even better a vegan” (Julia Butterfly-Hill). Even the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change Chair, Rajendra Pachauri, has pleaded with us to do so. Reduce over one tonne of greenhouse gas emissions by becoming a vegetarian, and by eating locally grown organic food. When you become a vegetarian you make a positive difference by slowing down deforestation and massively reducing water and soil contamination. See www.veg.ca

Call it what it is: Earth, Nature, Soil, Humus, Forests, Wilderness, Oceans, Wetlands or Rivers. They are not some resource called the “environment” that makes Nature a thing. Boreal Forest is an animal’s home and a Marsh is a flower’s rightful place to live. Let your generation celebrate Nature by immediately calling it just that and you’ll change how you interact with your planet. Reinvent the sacred. You are touching it right now.